Toronto indie-pop auteur Owen Pallett is surprised to find himself welcome among the more seasoned nominees. But he’s still wondering what to wear.

Owen Pallett confesses to feeling a tad like an interloper when he first arrived in Los Angeles this week to participate in some of the pre-Oscar festivities leading up to Sunday night’s climactic final awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre.

After all, the 34-year-old Toronto composer and indie-pop auteur — who shares a nomination for Best Original Score with the Arcade Fire’s Will Butler for their shared work overseeing the Montreal ensemble’s soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s Hereccentric man/machine romance Her — cuts a comparatively callow figure next to most of his fellow nominees.

One could easily devote the rest of this space, for instance, to enumerating the times John Williams, up this year for his score to The Book Thief, has previously won and/or been nominated for Academy Awards, while Alexandre Desplat (Philomena) and Thomas Newman (Saving Mr. Banks) are no strangers to the Oscar ceremony themselves. Pallett and Butler have one other first-timer to keep them company in the form of Gravity composer Steven Price, at least, but that still didn’t stop them fretting on the way in that they’d be regarded by the old guard as uninvited guests.

“I was worried that I would feel that way, to be honest,” says Pallett from L.A., mere hours before he was to take a turn with Williams, Newman, Desplat and Price conducting the house orchestra at the inaugural Oscar Concert from UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday evening.

“The guys who are, like, the executives of the music wing of the Academy are all well past 80, they’re all old guys and it’s, like, Randy Newman/Burt Bacharach sorta style, but they were just so welcoming. ‘Come, sit at the table and we’ll tell you firsthand stories about Stravinsky and Bernard Herrmann’ and stuff like that. So it actually feels like kind of the most amazing thing. There was no feeling of ‘uninvitedness’ whatsoever in the last few days that I’ve been meeting the composers and meeting the Academy members.

“Everyone has been so, so, so nice. You wouldn’t believe Alexandre Desplat. He is the coolest, most amazing guy.”

Pallett has been party to some major awards before, of course. He won the inaugural Polaris Music Prize in 2006 for his sophomore solo album under the Final Fantasy moniker, He Poos Clouds, and his string arrangements were all over the Arcade Fire’s 2010 opus The Suburbs, which went on to win Album of the Year at the Grammys and the Junos and the Polaris Prize the following year.

Still, the Oscars are completely new territory for him, and he didn’t really have anyone to ask about what he should expect.

“I know people who’ve won Grammys and sometimes you can’t walk into a room without running into someone who’s been nominated for a Juno, but I actually don’t know any Oscar winners,” he chuckles. “I’m not friends with any — with the exception of Buffy Sainte-Marie. She told me, ‘Make sure you eat before the performance.’”

Pallett refuses to speculate on his and Butler’s chances of actually winning an Academy Award on Sunday night.

He’s a big fan of Price’s Gravity soundtrack, he says, noting that “it’s very rare that traditional Hollywood scores somehow access my heart and make it skip a beat, but the score to Gravity really f---ed me up.” But he’s cool with anyone winning.

“This isn’t just me blowing smoke – I really, really respect the other guys and I’m excited for any sort of result,” he says. “I always lose Oscar pools so I have no idea who’s gonna win what.”

However Sunday shakes down, Pallett’s co-nomination can’t hurt the prospects of his forthcoming fourth solo record (and second since dumping the Final Fantasy alter ego), In Conflict.

Due May 13 via Montreal’s Secret City Records, it’s a rather more direct and rhythmically driven affair than previous Pallett outings, this time girding his futuristic voice-and-violin compositions with live-off-the-floor bass and drums by bandmates Matt Smith and Rob Gordon — not to mention vocal input and a smattering of synths and guitar from famous fan and friend Brian Eno.

A couple of quick preview listens suggest In Conflict — which will get a Toronto release gig, amidst ongoing touring duties with the Arcade Fire, on May 10 at the Danforth Music Hall — might be his strongest work yet, but for now there are more important points to ponder. Such as, say, what Pallett will be wearing to the Academy Awards.

“I actually don’t know what I’m wearing,” he says. “I have a nice suit that’s, like, my go-to suit. But I’m a little nervous because I’m touring all the time so my body mass is always fluctuating so, you know, one day I’ll be wearing a suit and it’ll be too baggy and then four months later I can’t do up the pants.

“I have another suit coming in, though. Kenzo is sending something over, I think. So I might be wearing a Kenzo suit.”

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